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Linux commands: pwd
Learn how the Linux pwd command prints your current working directory, so you always know exactly where you are in the filesystem when you feel lost.
8 minute lesson
Every shell process has a current working directory. Relative paths start there, so the same command can affect different files depending on where you run it.
pwdThe output is an absolute path such as /Users/flavio/projects/site. Use it before a destructive command, after several cd operations, or when a script behaves differently in two terminals.
Compare absolute and relative paths:
pwd
ls notes.txt
ls "$(pwd)/notes.txt"The last two commands identify the same file. Quoting $(pwd) matters because a directory name may contain spaces.
The shell also keeps the current path in $PWD:
printf '%s\n' "$PWD"pwd -P resolves symbolic links and prints the physical path. Plain pwd may preserve the logical route you used to enter a symlinked directory. That distinction matters when debugging scripts that compare paths.
Try it: create a directory, enter it through a symbolic link, then compare pwd and pwd -P. The command works on Linux, macOS, WSL, and other Unix-like environments.
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